#dog stuff

Fig gave me some lovely examples of what i refer to as buffering aka the adolescent pause. it’s something i see so often at this age and stage of training and i'm constantly having to coach clients through it (i work with predominantly adolescent dogs).

during adolescence so many changes are happening with a dog, both internally and externally, that we see behavior patterns we don't typically see with baby puppies or well trained adults. this is one of them. very often at this age we get these pauses of varying lengths when a dog is given a known cue and you'll hear people give all kinds of reasons as to why this happens. the dog is testing you. the dog doesn't understand. the dog didn't hear you. the dog is worried. and on and on they go. what i see more often than not is that the dog has conflicting/competing motivators. way more important than how they react in these situations or the cause of it, is how you should react.

what these dogs often need more than anything is some time to think. we all need that sometimes. especially when there's a lot going on in the environment. people typically jump right to either repeating the cue again, correcting the dog, getting food out, or all of the above. none of those things create reliable behaviors long term and you're often stuck in a cycle of constantly having to recue or correct the dog for things they could have had a solid understanding of if you gave them a little time and grace. when you don't do that, you run the risk of creating this state of learned helplessness that can be very hard to undo. what the dog actually learns is either: if you're not sure, do nothing until they make it easier or show you the food or if you're not sure, do nothing because if you try something and it's wrong you'll get corrected again. for these dogs, nothing becomes the safest option to protect them from confusion or discomfort.

my goal is always for my dog to feel comfortable offering behaviors because they know they'll be supported and rewarded for their efforts and that if they truly don't understand or are not ready for that level of difficulty, that i'll set things up so that they don't fail a second time. my job is to train so many good options for the dog to choose from that even if they're not quite right, they're rarely completely wrong. this includes offered/default and cued behaviors. if your dog knows a cue well enough that you feel comfortable using it outside of a training session, chances are the dog has a pretty decent understanding of the cue. it's also hopefully been proofed in a few different environments before you add things like distance or distraction or other elements of difficulty to it. if you've done all that front work it means your dog is likely not confused about what was asked. by giving them some time to think, you give them the opportunity to be successful on their own. that's a powerful feeling.

okay back to fandom it is for me.